NEW YORK -- It was a few days ago that Juan Soto became a topic of conversation, as he frequently is, around the Yankees¡¯ clubhouse. His hat turned backward, cutoff T-shirt on and bat in hand for another session in the cage, the superstar is impossible to overlook.
Wondering aloud, Carlos Rod¨®n had offered this thought: ¡°What do you think it feels like to be Juan Soto?¡±
¡°Is it like when you¡¯re in high school and you¡¯re hitting .450?¡± Rod¨®n said. ¡°Or you¡¯re in college and it¡¯s pretty easy to hit .350 with a bunch of homers? I don¡¯t know. It¡¯s still a challenge, right? But he just makes it look easy.¡±
Soto sure did once again on Monday, recording his fourth multihomer game of the season to support Rod¨®n¡¯s winning effort in a 9-1 victory over the Rays at Yankee Stadium. The All-Star hit two of his team¡¯s five homers, hooking a solo drive around the right-field foul pole in the seventh inning, then mashing a three-run laser in the eighth.
As infielder Oswaldo Cabrera put it: ¡°Those are Soto things.¡±
¡°Those are the things that Soto knows how to do,¡± Cabrera said. ¡°Obviously, it¡¯s really good to see those things, but at the same time -- we know who Soto is. He can do this.¡±
The first drive had Soto¡¯s teammates buzzing the most, a Statcast-calculated 424-foot blast that reached the far-off luxury suites in the third deck.
Soto arched his body as if to will the ball around the foul pole, a la Carlton Fisk, then savored the accomplishment with a 37.7-second trot around the bases -- likely a response to similar onfield celebrations by Tampa Bay¡¯s Jose Siri over the past two days.
Soto¡¯s trot was the slowest in MLB this year, the third slowest of the past five years and eight seconds slower than any other trip around the bases he has taken this year.
¡°I was just trying to make sure it was a fair ball,¡± Soto said. ¡°I was literally pulling with everything that I have to stay fair.¡±
Production from Soto and Aaron Judge has hardly been an issue during the Yankees¡¯ summer slide, but it has largely been a two-man show. As his team pounded Rays pitching for 15 hits on Monday, manager Aaron Boone was delighted to see contributions up and down the lineup.
¡°We¡¯re not going to score nine every day, but on the heels of [Sunday¡¯s 6-4 loss], I felt like we had a lot of good at-bats and carried that into today,¡± Boone said. ¡°We were able to hit the ball out of the ballpark, too.¡±
Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe hit back-to-back homers in the second inning, Cabrera stroked a two-run single in the fourth and DJ LeMahieu broke an 0-for-18 skid with his first homer of the season in the fifth. Alex Verdugo snapped an 0-for-20 streak with a sixth-inning single.
¡°We need all those guys at the end of the day,¡± Soto said. ¡°It¡¯s going to take more than two guys to go to the World Series and win it.¡±
The production supported one of Rod¨®n¡¯s sharpest outings of the season, down to his final pitch -- an 88 mph slider that zipped past Jos¨¦ Caballero for Rod¨®n¡¯s season-high 10th strikeout. Rod¨®n snapped his six-start losing skid with an electric seven-inning performance.
¡°Not much we could do. He threw a heck of a ballgame,¡± said Rays manager Kevin Cash. ¡°That's as good as we've seen him throw against us. When he's right, we know how talented he is. And unfortunately, we saw it today."
Rod¨®n permitted just two hits and two walks, showing few signs of the pitcher who had struggled for the better part of a month, his downturn coinciding with the Yankees¡¯ sub-.500 play since a June series in Boston.
¡°To pitch as well as he did, that¡¯s a big deal,¡± Boone said. ¡°Hopefully it¡¯s something that gets him rolling again. As he¡¯s gone through it here these last several weeks, there¡¯s been a lot of what we saw today, just in and around some struggles.¡±
On several occasions, Rod¨®n voiced his belief that opponents were sitting on his fastball early, and overall finding his fastball/slider combination too predictable.
Though Rod¨®n did incorporate his curveball (16) and changeup (10) in Monday¡¯s outing, the Rays had few answers for his bread-and-butter pitches. Tampa Bay did not manage a hit until Siri¡¯s solo homer with one out in the fifth inning.
¡°We¡¯ve been down a lot in the last few weeks,¡± Rod¨®n said. ¡°We haven¡¯t been playing that great, but today is a good day. We played well, and we¡¯ve just got to work off that into tomorrow.¡±